How often have you come across a message like, “Error Deleting File or Folder” while trying to delete one? For me, it’s been a frequent occurence while trying to get rid of some spyware file that I spotted on my system and invariably on each occasion I’ve been rebuffed with a message like that. To add to the frustration, no further details are provided about WHY such an error crept us, except for maybe a little elaboration on the lines of…

“Cannot delete file: Access is denied. Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.”

Pretty insightful, eh ? The message comes in various other flavours too…

There has been a sharing violation.

The file is in use by another program or user.

The source or destination file may be in use.

Such misbehaving executables / files can be quite difficult to get rid of and for the really desperate it might involve quite a few reboot-delete-reboot or reboot into safe mode-delete-reboot cycles. Wastage of time & effort if you ask me. Isn’t there any way out of this mess?

Well fear not, for there are quite a few handy utilities out there which can do the same for you in one swift stroke, without requiring you to reboot anyhow. One such noteworthy application is Unlocker. It’s a freeware that does a real good job of unlocking and deleting such files. IMHO, it might be the best all-rounder in this category.

Once installed, it adds a menu option named “Unlocker” in the right-click context menu that pop-ups when you press the right mouse button in Windows Explorer while pointing at any file or folder. Coolest part is that you would never require to bring up this dialogue manually. When you encounter a locked file, the window pops-up on it’s own and asks you to take an action.

Selecting the Unlocker option pop’s up a window showing the locking status of a file or folder, along with a list of processes that are currently maintaining locks on it. Also listed are the handles, process id’s and execution paths of each process.

You’re provided with three direct action buttons – Kill Process, Unlock and Unlock All. Using Kill, you can kill any particular process in the list. Similarly Unlock will release the lock maintained by a single process while and Unlock All will release all the locks on the file.

Note that, this doesn’t delete the file – it simply removes the locks on it enabling you to safely delete it. For the actual deletion, they’ve provided you with a dropdown box that gives you the option of Deleting / Renaming / Moving / Copying the file in question.

On some rare occasions, the lock cannot be released owing to some complications – there you’re given the option to mark the file for deletion upon reboot. But on 99% cases, you wouldn’t require a reboot.

Lets say with this tool I got a totally new-found sense of freedom on the Windows genre of OS-es. So what are you waiting for? It’s FREE, it’s tiny and it’s as useful as it can be. Get Unlocker today.

46 Responses

Mauricio: Glad you found the tool useful That makes me feel like the review was well worth it.

Art

86 mos, 3 wks ago

So, what if this doesn’t do it?
Pocket Killbox doesn’t either.
Neither does Microsoft’s ProcessExplorer.

I’m about to try del /P “PathOfFile” in the safe mode, which just better work!

Re: AutoCAD files. Apparently they are protected under Windows/XP Professional, but Home Edition is too stupid to deal with it.

- Art

Drew

84 mos ago

OMG!! this worked like a charm!! thanks sooo much!!! i have uploaded an .avi file on my gps memory card and the couldn’t delete it. But this program has saved my but from formatting the whole thing!!!!! THANKS A MILLION!!!!!

Thanks Iain. Unlocker is simply too good and bails you out from the tightest corners…

Cheers,
m^e

iunno

77 mos ago

this will not work if a file is in a recursive directory and the folder names are for example c:/program files/configuration.old/configuration.old/configuration.old/… and so on. this appears to be a windows limitation, you’ll have to rename the folder names to something shorter to be able to delete them.

thanks a lot,,,,,,,
i have tried for deleting the file for past 3day.
but now with the help of unlocker. i deleted that stupid file.
thanks a lot,,,,
its realy great…..
hats offffff……

Ian

63 mos, 2 wks ago

WOW – this is soooooo easy, Thank you for this it has saved me time and effirt in tidying up my Hard drives

spiderman

63 mos, 1 wk ago

thank you………….very much……………….

Alex

63 mos, 1 wk ago

It worked. I had a folder that wouldn’t delete because the error message states that the specified file cannot be found. I downloaded the Unlocker and although it wasn’t able to unlock the hidden spyware file(s) in the folder, it gave me an option to delete and magically deleted the folder for me.

Thanks.

Taurus

62 mos, 3 wks ago

Thank you very much. Unlocker is amazing. This freeware works perfectly fine. It unlocked and deleted the files without restarted. i have tested it on Windows XP Professional and Windows 2005 Server and works well.

Thanks

Lloyd

62 mos ago

Downloaded some dodgy porn for a laugh which I couldn’t delete, got really worried but unlocker allowed me to delete it, phew

Mike

60 mos, 2 wks ago

Entirely too easy. You’re supposed to suffer correcting problems like this. I had some corrupt files while trying to do a restore. When trying to restore correctly I couldn’t move them. They weren’t locked, but the program still deleted them without a problem.

This was the first search item I looked up and it was perfect. Wish they were all this simple. Thank you very much.

YEAH

60 mos, 2 wks ago

THANKS A LOT !

Jorge

60 mos, 1 wk ago

I just wanted to say Thank you. I had an 8 gb file taking up space for the longest time, and in less than 1 minute that it took to DL and install i deleted it completely.. THANK YOU

@clats: What file are you trying to delete? Some sort of system / cache / dll ? Can you elaborate on it a bit. Maybe easier to diagnose that way.

Kevin

59 mos, 3 wks ago

You haven’t explained why the problem occurs, just sold a product. I get it EVERYTIME I move a .mov file from my camera to the computer. I cannot delete the file from the camera! I have to reformat the card.

Marrie Alen

48 mos, 4 wks ago

The problem with these files is their long paths,for me nothing helped than a small tool available at http://pathtoodeep.com